Brexit is the replacement of one set of elites with another

Brexit represents the replacement of one elite with another even less democratic than its predecessor

This week has brought with it yet more proof that the Britain of the future envisioned by Brexiteers is a cold and uncaring one. There is reportedly widespread support in the cabinet for scrapping the Working Time Directive, which at present limits the number of hours an employee can be made to work by their boss.

You can already work more than 48 hours a week if you choose to, but your boss is unable to force you. Yet in the upside-down world of the prolier-than-thou Brexiteers, being forced to work until you drop is - and the following is a direct quote from the Sun newspaper - "what taking back control is all about".

This ought to give a clue to who is really set to gain 'control' after Brexit. Clue: it isn't those working class 'left behind' voters who Brexiteers won over last year with their rallying cries against 'elites'. In fact, genuine elites in this country would do quite nicely out of any plan to scrap the Working Time Directive.

When Shirebrook in Derbyshire voted to leave the European Union last year, did it imagine it was voting to hand even more power to local bosses such as the Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley, accused recently of running something akin to a 'Victorian workhouse'?

It is this contradiction between the rhetoric of the Brexiteers and the reality that makes the whole thing feel like such a con. Taking back control, the effective motto of last year's Leave campaign, means nothing of the sort upon any examination of the detail.

Brexit represents the replacement of one elite with another – albeit an elite that is even less democratic than its predecessor. We do at least get to elect our representatives to the European Parliament, whereas bosses such as Mike Ashley operate like petty dictators.

Thus I can see why some are keen to reverse Brexit in whatever way they can. The so-called 'bonfire of red tape' is, in reality, a pyre onto which your right to take paid holiday leave is probably going to be enthusiastically tossed.

Hopes of a swift Brexit reversal were also boosted this week by a new poll apparently showing that more than half of Britons now want to stay in the EU. The BMG Research poll for found that 51 per cent of those surveyed favoured staying in the EU, while 41 per cent continued to back Brexit.

The poll was predictably seized upon by those who wish to see the government change course. Indeed, former politicians from Tony Blair to Nick Clegg, as well as sitting MPs like the Green Party's Caroline Lucas, regularly cajole us with the message that 'Brexit can still be reversed'.

And the thing is, it probably can still be reversed. The real question is: should it be?

For a start, as Peter Kellner has pointed out, we can't trust this BMG poll, which looks like an obvious outlier compared to other recent polls. "Over the past six months... there has been a small shift to Remain, but only a small shift," Kellner writes.

But then, perhaps public opinion doesn't matter, for it seems as if many remainers would be content with reversing Brexit surreptitiously by putting some kind of legal spoke in the works.

Of course, Brexit isn't in any sense 'final' as some Brexiteers ludicrously maintain. This sort of bluster brings to mind the bold proclamations former communist countries used to embed in their constitutions referring to the 'irrevocability of the socialist system'.

A state is a state precisely because it can change its own rules and – with it – change course. The notion that a single vote binds future generations to a particular course is itself profoundly undemocratic.

But the Brexiteers did win the democratic vote last year, and the cost of going against it would be exorbitantly high in terms of lost public trust. Many Leave voters were undoubtedly conned by a dishonest campaign; yet it is also the fault of the liberal centre – which has governed Britain for the past two decades – that conditions were so favourable to a campaign that promised to deliver a good hard kick to the establishment. Rather than re-fighting last year's battles, remainers would be better off thinking about how to persuade Britons to re-engage with the EU in the next generation.

Part of the reason so many aren't I suspect lies in the fact that many liberal remainers reject any materialist explanation for Brexit at all. Rather than accept that many working class Leave voters felt disillusioned with the changes wrought in their communities over recent decades, Brexit is portrayed as a straightforward question of facts.

You are either in possession of the facts or you aren't. It is consequently a familiar case of disputing a democratic vote because the supposed 'facts' presented during the campaign were not really facts at all. Plus le change, plus c'est la même chose.

The favoured dichotomy of many remainers – 'open versus closed' – performs a similarly reassuring function. In one swoop, opponents of the unencumbered free market are automatically bracketed with the anti-immigration lobby. All are supposedly standing athwart history yelling 'Brexit'.

This is liberalism as a surrogate religion. It is also wildly counterproductive at a time when 'openness' for many people is synonymous with a crap job, a crap town, and the disintegration of the support networks of the past – the intimate safety nets Edmund Burke called the 'little platoons'.

I view Brexit as a slow-burning disaster. Not least because we are dwelling incessantly on it when there are so many urgent problems affecting this country.

But seeking to reverse last year's vote through some adroit piece of subterfuge will simply lend weight to the charge that snooty remainers have little time for the so-called 'Brexit blob'. It would also justify the assumption that many remainers would rather wish away the past 18 months than tackle the injustices in the liberal order that led us here.